The Long Calendar
by Foolscapping
Summary: One time per month, every month on Earth, Sam visits Dean for a day from the Cage. [Post-Swan Song AU]


**WARNINGS: VERY FUCKING GLOOMY AND HORRIBLE AND DEPRESSING. SERIOUSLY.** Possible interpretation of rape/non-con at one point (nothing graphic, and it's vague), hell trauma, traumatized!Sam, it's horrible. Sorry for the Dean-centric on feelings, I wanted to keep the Sam side a bit of a mystery to make things vague and terrible. I may do a Sam POV of this one later on?

**SUMMARY:** One time per month, every month on Earth, Sam visits Dean for a day from the Cage. (Dean POV, un-beta'd, written just to be a terrible person.)

* * *

The first month Sam had returned from the Cage, Dean was sitting on the couch drinking a cold beer, trying to help the hangover he'd inflicted on himself the night before — one month, exactly, after Sam had jumped. Now, the son-of-a-bitch was sitting on the floor right in front of him with blood on his clothes and a wild, confused look in his eye. He scooped him up (he should have fucking tested him with silver, holy water, whatever, doesn't fucking matter) and cradled him; said Sam's name over and over, disbelieving, at a loss. Sam smiled and laughed, and clutched him back.

"What the fuck, man?! What the _fuck_?!"

"I don't know," Sam rasped, "I don't know, I don't know—"

Castiel didn't have good news, when Dean called for him.

"He won't stay," he said, and Dean had to control his anger, avoid punching a hole in the wall when the angel explained; it's Lisa's house, and he's not about to break her shit, but he needs to break something, maybe go behead a monster, burn some bones, burn down the goddamn cemetery, because Castiel is essentially telling him Sam is only here because of his freaky-fated link with his brother, and once the sun goes down, his brother will be — **_poof_** — back down deep, where the devil has his claws in him.

Sam sits placidly, already looking so tired, not budging an inch.

Dean can tell Castiel scares him a little.

Dean can tell you that the first year in Hell is almost the worst one.

Almost.

He couldn't tell you what the first year in a cage there is with Satan, though. When Castiel gives them a sad little look and leaves, Dean runs a hand through his hair and gets down on his knee beside his brother on the couch, eyes glinting with fierce determination.

"We'll figure it out, Sam. We'll figure out a way to keep you up top."

Sam smiles thinly, glancing to his brother, and thank fucking god, there's still something there that may be hope. "Yeah."

They can only do so much in one day. He loads Sam up and drives to every close resource they have, because it's all he can think to do. Sam sits in the passenger seat and smiles into the wind, dressed in new clothes. It's completely wrong, knowing that his skin is smooth and untouched and yet he's been through an entire twelve months hell-time with Lucifer. It's all in his brother's eyes, instead. But the bastard is still smiling, and it's making Dean's stomach hurt. Sam says, flashing a dimpled smile, "Never thought I'd get to sit here with you again. I thought that'd be it."

Dean nudges about Hell. Sam shakes his head, and he can see Sam's eyes have gone glassy.

"Tell me what I missed instead, man."

Sam vanishes at sundown, after they're coming back from a psychic five towns away. Dean pulls over and screams into his steering wheel, and then he keeps driving to the next resource they have. He doesn't know what else he can do but this - and to call Lisa and tell her the truth. And then say sorry. And then drive in any direction other than what was his new home.

* * *

The second month, it turns out, proves Sam's arrival hinges on where Dean is. Because when someone knocks on Dean's motel door at six in the morning, it's Sam. He's covered in blood again, hair a mess, tired lines under his eyes.

"Dean," he breathes, and smiles.

He's been waiting a whole fucking month for this shit. Sam's been — Sam's been waiting ten years. He should have known better than to start telling Sam about his research, about different things; Cas took the rings as a safety precaution, but the bastard won't consider using them. Said it could be risky. Sam — stupid, smart Sam — agreed with the angel, when Dean told him about it. Dean's about to usher Sam to hit the road with him, because there's a big-ass library dedicated to American folklore that might have something, but Sam grabs his arm.

"Please," Sam asks, his eyes pleading. "I just want to… I want to be here with you, man. I don't want to waste this; please."

"Sam, I can't just — you're going to go back to Hell if I don't do something."

"Please," Sam just says in that tight little voice he uses when he's standing on a ledge.

Dean never uses their monthly day for solutions, for seeking out answers, not ever again.

They go and see a movie instead.

Dean wishes he could tell you what it was about; all he remembers is watching Sam eat popcorn and drink down sugary soda and nudge Dean like it was any other day. He's so happy, Dean doesn't know what to do, other than put a hand over Sam's knuckles and squeeze them tight. When the credits roll and they leave, Sam startles violently at the muffled noises of violence in the theater room beside theirs. Dean just puts his hand on his back and guides him wordlessly out.

He isn't sure if he should ask anything. Because in a few hours, Sam will be gone again.

The panic is overshadowed by iron-clad willpower not to break in front of his brother.

"I'm sorry," Sam says, on the way back to the motel. "I shouldn't… have made you do all that. Act like it's all like before. I just…"

"_No_," Dean says firmly, "No, it's fine. Sam, it's really okay. Fuck, man, until I can figure this all out for you, this is your day to be a person again. I know that, okay? I know something like this… it's a miracle for you. It's a fucked-up, horrible miracle." He glances over, heart racing, tongue heavy. "You say the word, whatever you want to do, we're going to do it. Okay? Don't you even for a fucking second change that."

Sam smiles weakly.

Then he's gone, and Dean is in the car alone. Again.

Sam is down below.

* * *

They finally visit Bobby, and Sam hugs a big, terrible tear out of the old hunter. Bobby plays his pokerface and he fixes an old junker with Sam; Dean doesn't know what they talk about. He feels like it isn't his business, but he wishes it should be.

The third month is the aquarium.

Sam finds the colors soothing.

Dean wants to scream.

* * *

The fourth month terrifies Dean, because Dean caved in on his third.

He'd like to think he's noble enough to believe his brother will be stronger than him, but he's a piece of shit sometimes; he's scared of what he'll see next. Regardless, he orders a room with two beds, but finds Sam curled up next to him at five-thirty in the morning, the blankets drawn up over his ears.

He's terrified, and who can blame him?

"It's — " Sam chokes. "It's so cold, in there. It's so _cold_."

He lets Sam burrow into his ribs.

He knows many times over what hopelessness feels like.

Sam wakes up two hours later with one of those little tightly-wound smiles, calls Bobby to hear his voice, and then he staggers into the bathroom and washes the stench of ten years of torture off him. Then he very calmly asks to visit a zoo. When they go, it's calm. Nobody's there; it's too cold for most, but Sam acts like the weather up top is nothing.

"Do you think I can take back souvenirs with me?" Sam asks in the gift store, and Dean almost whirls around to shove him without thinking. It's not a fucking joke, Sam. It's not a joke. It's not funny. But Sam is just standing there staring at the far wall like he has no clue how to accept this place.

Turns out, Sam's zoo key-chain is left on Dean's nightstand anyway.

* * *

The fifth month. Fifty years.

Sam arrives naked and screaming.

If Hell had wanted a better way to torture Dean, they could have picked this.

Sam apologizes over and over and over.

They don't go anywhere.

* * *

The sixth month, his brother appears at midnight. Sam asks to see the box full of pictures, of their family.

"You wanna — You wanna go out, Sammy? Do anything? I mean, it's midnight, but…"

Sam says, "No… I just. Let's talk about stuff. You know. The, the past."

Sam falls asleep a few hours into Dean's recollections.

When Sam wakes back up, Dean's got him curled up in the front seat of the Impala, and he offers him a beer. They both stare wordlessly into the twinkling, beautiful expanse of stars. It's the first time Sam cries, loud, wailing sobs.

Castiel, as always, isn't sure how to help when Dean calls.

He says he'll keep working on it. It's not reassuring.

* * *

The seventh month — not the best day. Dean is a selfish prick.

"What the _**fuck**_, Sam?!" He says, shaking his brother by the grungy collar.

"What the fuck! What are you thinking?! Don't ever try to fucking leave like that. You get one day, and you're gonna use it to sneak away for most of it?! You thoughtless — "

Sam isn't fighting him. He just closes his eyes and lets Dean shake him.

Dean sees himself in the mirror behind Sam's head, and he sees a fucking nightmare of a brother; he's a fucking monster. He drags Sam into his arms and squeezes him tightly, burying his face in his brother's tattered outfit; it's the second to last one left he's got of Sam's. Sam will come back in a month and Dean will have to have new clothes. In-between more dead ends and no answers and a maddening fall into desperation, he's gonna be clothes shopping for his imprisoned, traumatized kid brother. Only he's not a kid; he's been through more than any normal man on earth would even dream of.

"I'm tired of hurting you," Sam says, voice raw. "It's wrong. It's wrong to make you do this. I don't… I can't even tell how much time is passing in there, but I…" His eyes trail away, and he looks lost and desperate. "I can't keep doing this to you. I wish I…"

"Don't say it, Sam," Dean says.

"I wish you didn't have to see me."

They sit and stare at the walls.

"I don't care, Sam. I want you here. Me and you."

Sam makes a soft, thoughtful noise.

There is nothing at all out there that Dean can find to save Sam.

There's just nothing.

* * *

The eighth and ninth and tenth month, Sam locks himself in the bathroom. Dean has to break it down, drag him out like a sick dog trying to die in the bushes.

* * *

"It's been a year here," Dean says softly, patting his sleeping brother's hairline. Sam shifts, leans his chin into Dean's shoulder. He almost looks like he hasn't been in hell for one-hundred and twenty years. Almost. Later on, Sam asks Dean to promise him never to go to Hell, not ever again. Dean isn't sure he can promise that, especially with how empty-handed he is to help Sam, time and time again. How empty-handed he is of his brother.

He can't imagine what it's like for Sam, this taste of freedom.

Sam escapes his sight on the thirteen month, so Dean decides to never lay his head down to sleep until Sam comes and goes.

* * *

The twenty-fourth month, Sam asks to see the family pictures.

"Which one was… mom…? I can't remember…"

Sam stopped bothering to sleep, too.

* * *

Thirty-six months. Three years. Sam smiles as Dean fixes him a sandwich.

Sam's almost four hundred years old.

* * *

Fourty-eight.

They get shitfaced drunk.

* * *

Dean turns fourty-five in one hundred and eighty months.

He drinks, mostly. Hates the world, really. Hates angels and demons and everything. Himself, too, but that's a given. Maybe… it'd be better to make a deal and burn in Hell, because then at least he'd be somewhere close to Sam. That's fucked up. He knows it is. But he promised Sam he wouldn't, and so he just destroys his liver, because he's not sure what else is left to do. Bobby calls, and Dean somehow still has the heart to answer, and sometimes Dean hunts. But it's a cold, dead world there, and when Sam comes back again, he's over two thousand years old. If the Cage even runs like that.

He expects black eyes maybe, someday.

Instead, he gets his brother. No black eyes.

"H-hey. Dean." Sam wrings his hands, looking at the floor, smiling just a little. "Hey."

"Hey, Sammy."

"Hey, Dean. Hey… Hey."

He walks over, inventorying his brother's ruined outfit.

"I'm gonna put my hand on your arm," he says carefully, and when he puts his shaking hand on Sam's forearm, the man jerks back a little, but he doesn't run or scream and hurt himself. "You hungry, Sam? Let's get something good. I got you stuff in the back."

"Sam, you said. Right? That's me?"

Dean's thin smile is forced. "Yeah. 'Course it is."

Sam sits in one of the chairs at Dean's one-bedroom studio apartment and pets an old small dog Sam named Pepper (just turned eleven a week ago, in fact) in his lap, watching old re-runs of some 90's sitcom, and Dean's making up something that isn't meat, something that isn't slimy or too dark or too crunchy.

Dean sets the tray down in front of Sam, sits beside him, and puts his hand on his, but only after asking.

Sam turns to him, eyebrows bunched. He's got those crescent-shaped lines there, like always. His eyes are vibrantly green-brown in the light from the window. "Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"… Sorry. Just — wasn't sure. You said… Sam earlier? Is that me?"

"Sure is. S'my favorite name, too."

Sam looks at the television again, scratching Pepper behind the ears and looking pleased.

* * *

When Castiel comes to Dean one hundred and eighty-one months later, he tells Dean he's finally found a truce with his kind.

"My request was taking Sam back," Castiel says softly. "They accepted my request, Dean."

Dean says, voice tight, disbelieving: "Let's fucking _go_."

It comes with a manic sort of smile.

Down below, Sam's waiting for them, and they're only two-thousand years late.

But they're coming.


End file.
